All posts tagged ‘Crafts’

Toobalink, one of the fresh new ideas at Toy Fair this year. Photo: Amy Kraft

Maybe I’ve been going to Toy Fair too long. I’ve lost count, but I’m guessing this was probably my tenth Toy Fair in New York City. I’m starting to get a little cynical. Every year things seem to get more and more derivative, but this year I saw some things that for me crossed the line into theft of intellectual property, particularly in some big booths of some big companies. I got to thinking, what does it mean to be original? As I put together this list of products, I decided that original in this context means to take existing play patterns but put a unique spin on them. These are the toys that stood out as having something unique to offer.

Toobalink: This ingenius building toy is enhance by the fact that you can use the connector pieces with toilet paper and paper towel cardboard tubes. The more tubes you collect, the bigger you can build.

Loog: I’ve heard about this DIY guitar, but Toy Fair is the first time I got my hands on one. Kids will learn about the instrument by building it, and then they can learn the basics of playing guitar on three strings instead of the more intimidating six-string guitar. This was what I most wanted for myself at Toy Fair.

Goldie Blox, great for maker girls. Photo: Amy Kraft

Goldie Blox: I first saw Goldie Blox at Maker Faire where they fit right in, and they were a breath of fresh air at Toy Fair. Goldie Blox are designed to get girls interested in engineering by pairing building toys with storybooks about a girl who likes to invent things.

Nancy B Science Club: From Educational Insights, this is another product line that got STEM right for girls. They could have simply slapped girly colors on science tools as so many have done before them, but instead, they pair the tools with activity journals designed to spark experiments and ideas, and to follow more social play patterns exhibited by girls.

My 2-year-old got a pre-Toy Fair look at Tagamoto. Photo: Amy Kraft

Tagamoto: Tagamoto is the latest from Innovation First, creators of Hexbug. Indeed, when Santa brought Tagamoto for my kids, my daughter proclaimed, “It’s like Hexbugs, but better!” Kids assemble the roadway and then “code the road,” customizing the track to make the cars behave in certain ways. They’ll come to a stop at a stop sign, honk their horn, turn on their headlights or radio, and more.

Schmovie: The Hilarious Game of Outlandish Films. Photo: Amy Kraft

Schmovie: Schmovie is a game created by my friend Sara Farber with her husband, Bryan Wilson. The goal is to come up with hilarious movie titles based on random combinations of characters and genres. Here are some examples from their very active Facebook page: A drama about a fancy bowling team? Downton Alley. An action film about a deranged handyman? Dye Hard with a Varnish. A sci-fi film about a fashionista scientist? Logan’s Runway. You get the idea.

Obos: I want to collect them all. Photo: Amy Kraft

Obos: I fell in love with these little figurines with rearrangeable features. What’s nice about these toys is that in addition to the adorable factor and the build-it-yourself play, there’s virtually no packaging. Just remove the piece of paper around the outside and you’re ready to start building.

Little electronic bits from Little Bits. Photo: Amy Kraft

Little Bits: Little Bits are “a little bit of geeky fun.” A little bit is an understatement. These circuit-builders are not only super easy to use, but thanks to their size, they’re very easy to incorporate into a ton of different projects. Though the sets themselves don’t come with a lot of project ideas, their website is full of projects that inspire. Plus, they’re coming out with new inclusive project sets, like a cardboard cat that shakes when you touch its tongue.

Make your own toolbox jewelry with Klutz. Photo: Amy Kraft

Klutz: Sure you’ll see project kits for kids all around Toy Fair, but the Klutz kits are the ones I come back to time and time again, not only for quality but also for great ideas. (They’re my go-to gift for just about every birthday party.) Among the new kits that caught my eye this year is Toolbox Jewelry, designed with a special eye to get dads interested in crafting with their kids. Plus, what a great way to reuse the extra nuts and bolts you have sifting around in the bottom of the toolbox.

The pressure’s on! What’s Activision going to do with Skylanders next year?

On Sunday night I was watching Killing Lincoln on the National Geographic Channel. I’m currently reading the book; the docu-drama, narrated by Tom Hanks, is a nice companion.

Perhaps because of the show’s presidential theme, or perhaps because of President’s Day this week, the above commercial aired. It’s about a young girl who announces to her mother just before school, “It’s Dress Like a President Day. I’m supposed to be Martin Van Buren.” Mom looks up his likeness on Google, then breaks out her sewing supplies, cuts up panty hose, rips apart a pillow, and before you know it, the young girl is riding to school looking just like him!

My husband and I were laughing and laughing and laughing at this commercial! We looked it up on YouTube to play it again, so we could laugh some more! We know it’s an old commercial, but like I said, we usually are fast-forwarding through them, so for us it was like new.

I’m still laughing even thinking about the commercial. Why? Because we’ve been there. So many times. My sons have announced with very little notice: “I’m supposed to make a model of a <insert historical object, animal or famous person here> for school.” I’m suddenly ripping up magazines and newspapers for paper mache, stitching together felt, and assembling pinecones and sticks together that were collected from the backyard.

Has anyone else felt like Mom in the Google commercial? Tell us your stories!

I am absolutely in love with subscription boxes, but I’m not one for accumulating a lot of unnecessary stuff. My minimalist tendency trumps the excitement of getting a monthly surprise in the mail. Therefore, the subscription boxes I am signed up for are either food or DIY oriented i.e. things I know will get consumed or will occupy my time in a productive way. That is why I sought out a couple of craft subscription boxes to put them to the test!

Chic Maker is a subscription box for DIY jewelry. I’ve never tried to make my own jewelry and the jewelry section at Michaels always looked so intimidating to me, so Chic Maker has been a really helpful way to get into it. I get all the materials and instructions I need to learn how to make jewelry, and I feel more confident I will able to tame my own jewelry projects soon! And my favorite thing is I’m pretty certain the resulting product will be one I can use frequently.

Sample contents: I received two kits to review, both bracelets. The first one was the less involved of the two, and I was able to finish it within one episode of Doctor Who. The kit contained four silk cords, one golden aluminum chain, two rings, one spring clasp, and one small chain for the clasp to attach on.

The kits contained clear instructions with a lot of pictures, both the packaging and the photographs looked very professional. Somehow I ran short of two cords in the first kit, I’m not sure if I did something wrong or what. On the second kit, there were more than enough beads left over for me to make quite a few more bracelets. I really like the look of both bracelets and even more so, considering I’m able to say I made them myself!

Monthly subscription cost: $29.90 per month, and if you sign up for 3 months up front you also get a starter kit valued at $25. The starter kit contains two jewelry pliers, a cutter, a tube of jewelry glue, and a tape measure.

Craftistas is a subscription box for crafts. It’s pretty open-ended and past projects have included purses, gloves, ear warmers, journals, whatever happens to be trendy.

Sample contents: The box I received to review was a yarn-wrapped wreath. Items included in the box: straw wreath, more than enough yarn cover it up, four squares of burlap to make hearts, a whole sheet of alphabet stickers to spell out the word or quote of your choice (instructions said “love”), six strips of burlap to make flowers, and two ribbons to hang and decorate the wreath.

I wrapped the yarn around the wreath for the better part of another episode of Doctor Who, made flowers from burlap, and added my own adaption of a quote from Serenity. The instructions also included hearts, but since I received the kit on Valentine’s Day, I felt already hearted-out so I skipped those. In the end, I’m pretty happy to hang the result on my front door!

Monthly subscription cost: $24 monthly, or $21 per month if you sign up for one year.

It’s hard to deny that zombies are everywhere and now Fiona Goble has written Knit Your Own Zombies so you can have a less deadly version in your own home. This book includes all the information you’ll need to create your own undead army.

This isn’t Goble’s first time writing about knitting. She’s previously written knitting books about creating everything from fairy tales to the royal wedding, and has only now turned her attention to something a little darker.

When you live in a house with four Lego crazy kids, nothing says love on Valentine’s Day more than a Lego themed gift. These Lego Friendship Bracelets are a perfect fit for just that. I have a daughter and three sons, and I love an idea that acknowledges smart, creative girls can love building and creating with Lego bricks, too. Since my boys are mostly teenagers now, I doubt I could get them to actually wear these bracelets, but they would love the construction part (translation: drilling holes in the bricks with loud power tools).

I stumbled upon this adorable idea on a website called The Centsible Life. It was submitted by a blogger named Tonya Staab, who suggests that even if you don’t get these made in time for Valentine’s Day, they would work great for party favors at a Lego themed birthday party and stocking stuffers at Christmas. I’d think they would also be a fun thing to make when kids are trying to pass the time on sick days or having a few friends over for an epic sleepover party. Here are the simple directions, with very helpful pictures.

I do believe it’s time to dig around in the basement for my power drill. This year Valentines Day is going to about more than just heart shaped pancakes and a giant box of guilt free chocolate.

I’m a bit of a photo nerd in progress. I like to think that I’m getting better, and I as I pointed out in my recent travel gift guide, I’ve been learning my way around the Panasonic camera that I got a few months ago. One of the things I love about having a good camera is being able to make thoughtful gifts for my family using, well, their favorite things: pictures of my kids.

With a baby daughter, you could say I have a corner on the market when it comes to that. She’s the youngest, and both sets of grandparents (and extended family) are smitten with her to say the least!

I was excited to try out the new Adobe Photoshop Elements 11, because right now I just don’t have time for complication. My life is currently a revolving door of responsibility, appointments, and transition around every corner. As much as I enjoy using more complicated programs, Elements helped me boil it down to the basics and put something together quickly and easily. There is no price on that!

The dashboard is straightforward, and the presets allow you to create a variety of, well, elements, with hardly more than a few clicks. No worries about formatting or measuring. You open up the organizer, you select what pictures you want (in this case a photo collage) and then the editor gets set up just as you need it. You can let the program create the design for you, but it still allows you to go in and edit. I like the fact that it’s got three modes: Quick, Guided, and Expert. This means that if, like me, you like to roll up your sleeves and get a little creative, you can. And it’s easy.

Controls and commands are boiled down, but still are familiar for those using Photoshop–you can shift layers, alignment, edit colors and text, even apply layer masks if you like. There’s great little cutouts for different shapes (like I used in the photo above), not to mention a variety of very helpful presets if you’re not feeling creative. And as the mother of a nine month old who apparently thinks 4am is a perfectly good time to wake, I can certainly sympathize.

All in all, Photoshop Elements 11 is a very intuitive program that’s ideal for crafting projects, cards, calendars, and all manner of gifts and photo expressions. I highly recommend it! It currently retails at $99.99–a bargain for the versatility, especially if you aren’t ready to go all-in with the full Photoshop experience and want a more streamlined approach to photo editing.

And to celebrate the season of love, we’re giving away a free copy of Photoshop Elements 11! Just tell us in the comments how you’d best use Photoshop Elements 11 and you’ll be entered to win (randomly, of course). Our winner will be notified and receive a copy in the mail.

Having established that I go overboard to satisfy my son’s obsessions, I went one step further. After filling a Pinterest board with Octonauts goodies for his next birthday party, I realized that something was sorely lacking. So I took out my scissors, my stack of unused felt, and started making masks, of every Octonaut!

Meomi liked them, so you can find the full set of instructions on the homepage for the original Octonauts stories. If your bent doesn’t run to felt masks, there are scores of other things you can do to embellish your appreciation of the sea faring adventurers:

There aren’t nearly enough crochet or knitted patterns out there, but this amigurmi Captain Barnacles and Kwazii are a good start. My next project is to use my favorite Amigurumi booksand attempt to creat a set of Octonauts for the baby, who likes to chew on his brother’s toys!

If you aren’t especially crafty, you can use your minecraft server to create a virtual underwater world.

Or if you feel the need for an Octoanuts/Firefly mashup theme for a birthday party, you can get some great ideas from The Daddy Doctrines.

Since my son is the only child among his friends to take an interest in this particular show, we have found the crafts, especially the masks to be a great way of involving his friends. They each don a mask and have a pretend adventure, without needing to know anything else other than “this is fun.” It’s a win win playtime!

As January draws to a close, it’s time to get more realistic about those new years resolutions.

One of my unspoken resolutions was to do more crafts with my boys. In a way, I started this during the Christmas season, choosing not to wait. As a family we made handprint wreaths and Christmas trees, my ten month old had a lot of fun with that one. I have lots of tools for crafting, my Cricut, my sewing machine, but these are not particularly good for little hands. Craft-a-Day: 365 Simple Handmade Projects by Sarah Goldschat gives me day to day crafts that interest me, but that don’t exceed the constraints of a busy mom with little time and even littler hands available.

The book contains 365 simple projects based around fifty two theme weeks. The first week is snowflake week, February sees some Valentine crafts, December offers the usual Christmas goodies, but what piqued my interest were the many suggestions for the weeks without a ‘natural’ theme. There is a gnome week and a mustache week, there is a robot week and a hexagon week, truly something for every shade of geek in your home! This book can be used as a way of simply crafting more often, organizing pre-school activities, arranging homeschool projects that pull in all ages, or as a source book for themed birthday parties.

Among my post-Christmas traditions is the yearly run to local craft stores on Boxing Day. Of late I have narrowed it down to simply A.C. Moore, due to its handy location next to Target, and JoAnn Fabrics, due to its sheer awesomeness. A trip to JoAnn Fabrics, for me a bi-monthly occurrence at the very least, is a dangerous thing. I am a crafter. I knit, sew, crochet, knifty knit, do strange things with perler beads, scrapbook, and, well you get the idea. This week JoAnn’s became a little more dangerous for me as they became a little more geeky.

JoAnn’s has long been my source for Curious George fabric for my son, and they have always had a wide range of licensed fabric. However, crafty geeks all over the US can now breathe a sigh of relief, as no longer will you have to rely on Spoonflower for those themes that you covet. JoAnn now stocks licensed Star Wars and Star Trek fabric. I honestly had a bolt of each in my cart before coming off my high and putting it all back; instead of splurging all at once, I’ll wait for a really good coupon!

Idea found on Pinterest: Three boxes in various sizes, white paper, cut out bits, and a scarf equals a cute presentation of gifts from Santa. Image: Cathe Post

Santa is coming! Santa is coming! The aftermath of Santa leaves boxes and paper that fill your recycle bin and garbage through Valentine’s Day. Why not build a play structure out of the bits instead?

My husband and I built snowmen we found on Pinterest for our kids this Christmas. We found a large, medium, and small box for each child, filled the boxes with their Christmas presents, and then wrapped them in freezer paper we had from last year’s Christmas gifts. As a final touch, I crocheted a Cars scarf for my son, and am finishing up an Adventure Time Jake Scarf for my daughter. But after the kids dismantle their snowmen on Christmas morning, what are we going to do with the boxes?

Look up “fort kit” on Google or Pinterest. There are more ideas than I can list here. Image: Cathe Post

It is time to breathe. Yes. It’s December. Let’s let that sink in for a minute. Holiday shopping is completely stressful with families trying to out-purchase each other, and hit the Black Friday deals and Cyber Monday deals and the continued deals throughout the month. When my oldest daughter was born almost seven years ago, my husband and I decided that we were going to start making gifts at Christmas. Now that both our kids are older (three and seven) they both get to make gifts as well. Last year I shared what the handmade gifts my family has made in previously, so now I am going to share what we made this year if you are still looking for inspiration. Continue Reading “Handmade Gift Ideas From the Post Family” »

Hanukkah in a Box is a kit for the whole family. Image: Ellen Zimmerman.

Everyone could use a little help during the holiday season. Some people ask for help with donations, decorations, dinner or the aftermath. Others need help from square one. For those people, there’s Jewish Holidays in a Box, LLC.

This web-based outfit has a bunch of boxed kits that are designed to deliver Hanukkah with ease — or at least in a box. The company sent me one of its products, Hanukkah in a Box, to check out.

Now, just a little backstory, please. Growing up, my family wasn’t very religious. However, being Catholic made this time of year an exciting one. Hooray for Christmas! Once I entered high school, my father got remarried to a Jewish woman and we became a bit of a spiritual Brady Bunch. It didn’t seem to matter on a daily basis. Then, December would roll around.

Every year, we went through the motions of Hanukkah. However, I didn’t get a whole lot out of it beyond a few prayers and a ton of delicious latkes. Having something like this would have been great.

At this time of year I get strange ideas in my head. Strange ideas like crafting everyone’s Christmas presents the week before Thanksgiving, making over a dozen crocheted turkeys for place settings, or this year, making Superhero Christmas cards. Luckily the people at Cricut are just as craft-crazy as I am at this time of year, and happily sent me a Cricut mini and their Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Supermancartridges to aid my Christmas craft explosion. Having already snagged the Gingerbread and Winter Lace Cartridges last holiday season, I decided that I could easily make some very geeky Christmas cards for my fellow geeks and family members. Given the plethora of Christmas paper around at this time of the year I knew I would have no trouble finding supplies, but I had no idea just how much fun and how fantastic making these cards was going to turn out to be.

For the uninitiated, the Cricut is an electronic die cut machine. Up until recently you used changeable cartridges and keypads to custom cut designs and lettering at home. In 2011, Cricut introduced a range of machines that hook up to your computer, and using software called Cricut Craft Room, enable you to purchase cartridges digitally and have a greater degree of flexibility and control over what you cut. Though each of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Superman cartridges have some excellent images of the characters to cut, good guys and bad guys, it was the logo cut outs that proved most useful. Using the famous “S” and bat symbols combined with some Christmas paper, it was easy to make a “Super” Christmas card. I started off simple, finding a weird kind of pleasure in using pink Christmas carol paper as the background for a Dark Knight Christmas card.

I’m always on the lookout for crafts for my 3-year-old daughter. I’ve looked at just about every handprint and toilet-paper-roll craft that have made their rounds on Pinterest, which has resulted in some fun projects and keepsakes. Recently I put my own geeky twists on typical preschooler art projects, all of which were met with enthusiasm by our little geeklet. I hope these ideas will inspire and entertain your kiddos as well.

Superhero Toilet Paper Rolls

With the help of some construction paper, glue, markers, and toilet paper rolls, you and your kids can create your own legions of superheroes or villains. Construction paper cut in strips can create suits, boots, belts, and more. If you’re looking to add an authentic look to your characters, you can easily find the appropriate logo online to print and glue.

My daughter, inspired by my version of the Justice League, suggested painting a roll green to make the Hulk — who now likes to visit her dollhouse on occasion. Who needs action figures when you have toilet paper rolls?

Those of us who want to live more artfully, frugally, and with a hands-on approach tend to run up against those ever hungry monsters, Time and Money. That’s where green crafter Maya Donenfeld comes in. Her focus is on reinventing everyday materials into useful items for the family, effectively taming those monsters.

“Reinvention” by Maya Donenfeld (Wiley). Image: Deborah Donenfeld.

The popularity of her blog, Maya Made, (with awesome tutorials like how to make elf slippers) led to the publication of her first book, Reinvention: Sewing with Rescued Materials. It’s a sturdy volume with a spiral binding, perfect to use as a reference in the middle of a project, and augmented by dozens of beautiful full-color photos. It covers techniques and methods, with information about each of the seven recommended materials including sourcing, how to deconstruct, environmental impact, and tips for use. I’m mostly enthralled by her step-by-step instructions for making 28 inspiring projects. It’s just hard to know where to begin. Here are some ideas.

Have jeans no one wears? Use the denim along with an old bed sheet to make a full-sized hammock. Or pair jeans with a piece of leftover wool to make oven mitts. Or make a denim rug.

Pull together some old t-shirts to make a child’s pillow pal, printed with a robot perhaps. Or make a “forager skirt” for the little girl who likes to pick up shells and stones as she walks.

My absolute favorite is the “toadstool cottage.” A cardboard tube and wool scraps come together to make a dollhouse-like play place with a removable lid, perfect for tiny stuffed animals or other toys. The wool blanket with holes I intended to patch is now fated to face my scissors.

I had the pleasure of being on Tech News Today last week, and had a blast talking tech with some of the best. We covered a variety of topics, as they do, but there’s one thing I can’t stop thinking about: the Form 1 3-D printer from Formlabs. It’s currently being Kickstarted (well, if you consider that it’s already blown past its goal), looks like a futuristic popcorn air popper, and shockingly costs under $2500. Even more exciting, the final products are amazingly polished and don’t require sanding like many other, more expensive printers do. That means creations are useful right out of the… uh, vat. Okay, so they say it a lot better than I do:

The results are amazing: the Form 1 can print layers as thin as 25 microns (0.001 in) with features as small as 300 microns (0.012 in) in a build volume of 125 x 125 x 165 mm (4.9 x 4.9 x 6.5 in). This means you can print complex geometries with the exquisite details and beautiful surface finish that will make your creations stand out.

You may wonder what on earth a mom would want to do with a 3-D printer–if you’re asking that question, I’d kindly direct you to the URL above. As 3-D printers are catapulting toward affordability, you’re going to start seeing a great many more applications. I have a feeling that in the future, our kids will all have 3-D printers at their fingertips.

But right now, for the first time, I feel like getting one of these amazing gadgets is actually possible. So to get your imaginations going along with me, here’s five things I’d do right away if I owned a Form 1 3-D printer (once I master the software, etc., –but those are just details).

Cookie Cutters — Like many bakers out there, I’m miffed by the price and the lack of creativity when it comes to cookie cutters. My kid wants Volkswagen Beetles and band logos and superhero emblems. He’s not interested in the ugly looking lumpy cars or holiday variations you see at general big box craft stores. With a little computer knowhow it’d be easy as pie to get the right silhouette, much to the delight of my boy. Personally I’d love font cookie cutters for use on little cookies and in fondant and other cake decorations. The geek in me rejoices in a well-shaped confectionary script! Continue Reading “Five Things I’d Make on the Form 1 3-D Printer” »

The countdown has begun. World Maker Faire New York 2012 will open its gates at the Hall of Science in Queens this Saturday, September 29!

If you’ve never been to a Maker Faire — and flagship Faires and Mini Maker Faires are spreading around the US and other countries as well — organizers MAKE Magazine and O’Reilly Media call it a “family-friendly festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker movement.” Now in its third year, World Maker Faire New York will be a two-day long extravaganza, featuring over 500 Makers presenting displays, live shows, talks, and plenty of hands-on activities.

There will be many returning favorites, including EepyBird and their dynamic Coke Zero and Mentos fountains, the Life-Size Mousetrap, and the Learn to Solder workshop. And there will be plenty of new Maker exhibits and events as well, including the Nerdy Derby and Toothpick World. I’m looking forward to wandering the aisles of the BUST Craftacular Marketplace, where I’m hoping to find a pair of robot earrings (and be inspired to go home and try some new projects myself)!

At the booth at various times throughout the weekend you’ll get the chance to talk about geek parenting with GeekMom writers including Helene McLaughlin, Andrea Schwalm, Rebecca Angel, Amy Kraft, Cindy Ortiz, Ruth Suehle and me, together with GeekDad regulars Dave Giancaspro and Brian McLaughlin. I’m particularly excited that this year I’ll be giving talks about Low Tech/No Tech Robotics Projects for Kids and signing books on Sunday (11:30 am on the Make Demo stage in the Maker Shed store and 3:30 pm on the Make: Live stage).

World Maker Faire New York at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, NY will be open Saturday, September 29 from 10 am to 7 pm and Sunday, September 30 from 10 am to 6 pm. Come join us, and be sure to stop by and say hi!

As my kids get older, they just tend to get more interesting. And every once in a while, they prove that they’re total geniuses. The trick is to catch them being good and encourage them to be even better. This summer, my ten-year-old daughter made a mermaid tail. She’s got a bit of an obsession with mermaids. She loved the series H2O Just Add Water (which is surprisingly good for a fantasy kids’ show) and she’d been doing a lot of research on mermaid tails.

She discovered that there’s such a thing as a swimmable mermaid tail, and she really wanted to make one. She not only presented me with instructions, but she’d also researched prices. That’s some serious project initiative for an almost 5th grader. I did set one limitation. She could not make a swimmable mermaid tail. She could only make a costume. I don’t think swimmable tails are safe for young swimmers (or necessarily safe for experienced swimmers, for that matter.)

The mini mermaid tail.

Was it the easiest thing to sew? No. I think we all learned to hate Lycra swim fabric a little with this project, but the results were nice.

If you want to try this yourself, we had her make her pattern on poster board. It’s ok to round down on the measurements instead of up if you’re using lycra. It stretches. We then had her sew the fin separately from the body of the tail and attach them afterward. The fin is stiffened with feather boning and heavyweight sew-in stabilizer, since we were mean parents and wouldn’t let her use a monofin. The stabilizer was inserted after the fin was turned, as was the feather boning, and then the fin was top-stitched to hold it together and emphasize the fin shape.

The great thing about projects like this? Not only did she learn sewing skills, she has a launching point for more creative learning. Once she’d made the big tail with help, she made her Barbie a tail with no help at all.

She’s also decided that she’s going to make a series of videos about her adventures as a mermaid. Bring it on. I figure this is her chance to learn about storyboarding, editing, and creative writing. Perhaps even spelling. (She started with “Epsod 1” until I had her sound out the word.)

This adorable felt book features a light-up robot with interchangeable parts! Image: imagineourlife.com

Stephanie Segall is a wizard with felt.

About a year ago, the Virginia-based graphic designer, crafter, and mother to two-year-0ld Jackson, aka Jax, started making “quiet books” — fabric books with interactive elements to keep preschoolers quietly entertained. Although she uses only inexpensive kids’ craft felt, the pages Segall creates are works of art — lively, creative and colorful. And Segall has been posting patterns and tutorials for her amazing designs on her website Imagine Our Life.

Segall has created quiet book pages with themes like camping, rainbows, and cooking breakfast. But as a fan of robots, my favorite is her LED Robot Quiet Book. Using inexpensive Lilypad e-sewing components from SparkFun, Segall gave her robot a push button that blinks on lights on the robot’s head and body!

Even more amazing, the robot’s head, arms and legs are interchangeable with other snap-on parts, so kids can design their own cyberfriend. Each head has different LEDs. On one the nose lights up; on another, it’s the ears; and on the third it’s the mouth.

What a wonderful, fun idea — and what a great execution! This is a friendly little robot any toddler would love. You can see Segall’s latest creations on Facebook, or check out what other quiet books she’s enjoying on Pinterest.